This student was just admitted off the waitlist at his dream school – is it too late to ask for merit aid? https://www.collegeconfidential.com/articles/last-minute-merit-money-from-waitlist-college/
I think asking for merit money at this point is an exercise in futility. I don’t know the waitlist policy regarding merit aid at every college. I can tell you that when my daughter was given her first offer from waitlist, they gave her annual merit aid as part of the offer. She did not ask for merit from the school.
If the school was trying to entice this student, they would offer money. The school didn’t do that. Seems obvious to me. I guess there’s no harm in asking though.
It can happen, though I would not expect it. It’s never too late to ask and you never know whether it’s too late to get, until you ask. There are some schools that might just have some money left in their merit money coffers because enough accepted students who were offered that money decided to go elsewhere. It’s possible that an AO is getting lean pickings from the wait list calls because kids are set in their acceptances and got merit money offers from them. There is the fact that these colleges want to fill the class, and meet certain set goals that include getting enough kids coming to the school with a certain merit money budget. If there is merit money left and you need to get some more students on board, and you want to get this done rather quickly, yes, I can see an AO coughing up some money.
There’s no harm in showing the new school the merit offer from the other school and see if they’ll do anything. If they say, no, then the family can decide whether the cost is worth it. I hope that if they decide that the cost is worth it, that the extra $100k is not a debt that they or the student takes on.